Tag: nten

We had a wonderful time attending and presenting at NTEN’s annual Nonprofit Technology Conference last week in Minneapolis! We got a ton of knowledge on the latest and greatest trends in the NPTech world, got to meet great people, and see some snow!

We will continue to post here to keep the conversation going by recapping some of our favorite panels and trends we saw. We’ve also posted a special page on our website aggregating NTC 2013 Resources and Recaps! We’re starting with a recap of our panel – Level Up Your Fundraising, Understanding the Psychology Behind What Motivates People to Give.

We had a packed house(!) – which tells us that this is a topic that gets people excited. We’re sharing our slides and presentation recap below!

Online Giving is On the Rise

We now have over ten years of data on online giving and we have seen online giving continue to grow. According to the 2012 Digital Giving Index, 65% of people gave in 2012 vs only 4% in 2002. The average donation through social media is growing as well as people are more comfortable with social giving, and one study found that giving campaigns that integrated social media raised TEN TIMES more dollars than those that didn’t.

And your website supports more than just an online donation form – your website can increase revenue for your NPO through channels like event registration, sponsor directories, job board listings, and more. (Sidenote – In May we are hosting a webinar on Increasing Your Earned Revenue through Tendenci Modules. Register on our events calendar free!)

Material – This is the most straight forward of the three, you give something (time, money, etc.) to get a material gain

Ideological – Identifying with a cause

We often hope or assume that donors are motivated purely ideologically, but it is important to note that sometimes people start interacting with a nonprofit based on other motivations like social events, material membership benefits, etc The challenge is to nurture the relationship with them and convert them to an ideological supporter!

What Motivates People Online?

Tap Into Visitor Motivations in 7 Seconds

On the web, there is the added challenge of timing – you only have about 7 seconds to tap into these motivations before they make a first impression. If the visitor isn’t hooked in these first few seconds, they won’t continue onto other pages of your site – and certainly won’t donate.

Visitors are Skeptical of Nonprofit Websites

Researchers from Stanford University studied how people evaluate credibility of different types of websites, and found that when it comes to Nonprofit Websites, visitors are generally skeptical.

Evaluating Website Credibility: Design vs. Motive

The credibility study found that on average, visitors use design to evaluate credibility 46.1% of the time. For nonprofits, this percentage is lower than average at 39.6%. Design is still important, but less so for nonprofit websites than other industries.

On the other hand, the researchers found that people use company motive to evaluate credibility higher than average for Nonprofit Websites. Nonprofit websites visitors look for company motive to evaluate credibility at 20.2%, versus 15.5% of the time for all websites on average.

Build Credibility Online Through Content

We’ve presented the challenge – visitors are skeptical of nonprofit websites and you only have a short time to change their minds. But there is some good news! NPOs can build credibility online through content.

Tips for Creating Credible Content Online:

Make it Visual

Visual matter because:

Visuals show that you are “real” – a photo of your real volunteer is much more powerful than a stock photo of a “volunteer”

Visuals can be processed more quickly – the average person reads 200-300 words per minute, but can process a visual image in as little as 1/20th of a second

Visuals aid in STORYTELLING

Emotions drive Buy Decisions.

Recent studies have shown that despite our preconceived notions about rationality driving decision, that actually emotions drive buy decisions- to the point that the human brain can’t make decisions without emotional influence.

Neurologist Antonio Damasio observed this phenomenon through the peculiar behavior of one of his patients. Elliot had suffered brain damage to a part of the brain known as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is implicated in the risk and benefit analysis of decision making.

Elliot ostensibly seemed normal, with one glaring exception. He lacked the ability to make decisions, deliberating endlessly in the face of simple, mundane choices such as whether or not to use a black or blue pen or when to schedule his next appointment. Because brain damage had severed the connection between his emotions and his rational thinking, Elliot was strangely devoid of feeling and even emotionally numb to his own tragic inability to make decisions.

7 Tactics for Building Credibility Online

1. Framing the Ask

Keep it Consistent

This does not refer to making it visually pleasing, but more about making it consistent with your branding. The 2012 Digital Giving Index showed that branded donation pages raise up to 6x more dollars.

Make it personal

Peer to Peer fundraising was a trend we saw lots of people talking about at NTC. The premise of P2P fundraising is that the ask comes from an individual instead of the organization. Race organizations have been doing this for some time, and now other social causes are creating fundraising kits where a volunteer can set up a donation page and ask their friends individually for donations. This new framing immediately makes the potential donor more connected to the cause, and builds trust because the ask is coming from a friend. Giving is all about trust. And who do you trust? Your friends.

2. Develop Trust

Think about Content you can add to your site that immediately develops trust. Examples of content that builds trust:

Ask for more than money – include other ways to give back like volunteering, in-kind donations, etc.

Incorporate third party validation

3. Apply Social Pressure

Social is a powerful motivation of people. Use social pressure to:

Start with the people who already love you

Host a kickoff event or special experience and invite them to share photos and videos with their friends

You then reach their extended networks

Engage new supporters

Engaging supporters is sort of like dating, you have to work harder in the beginning

Start by tapping into material or social motivations, offer them something

Create shareable content and make it easy to share – think about content people love like photos, video, infographics, statistics, etc.

Easy places to start

Incorporate social aspects into your website

Show photos from past events to show how many people came, how much fun it was

Display the names and photos of people registered for an event on the registration page

Incorporate Add This (addthis.com) or Share This (sharethis.com) buttons to your pages to make content easily shareable across social media channels

4. Give Back First

As we mentioned before, in the beginning you have to give back first to build trust. There are other ways to do this beyond offering material goods:

Content Curation

Be a trusted source on your cause. Curate content with a resource library on your site. You don’t have to create all of the content, provide value with your time and expertise by curating content from other organizations as well and link out to the great work they’re doing.

Review your analytics to determine what content your visitors care most about – and give them more of that!

5. Aim for Slow Change

Meet people where they are. Don’t assume they will start being ideologically motivated – you may have to start with material or social motivations to get them in the door and begin to build a relationship with them. Some examples:

Popular Content Like your Job Board

Tendenci Client PRSA Houston gets 60% of their traffic to the Job Board. They do a great job of using this real estate to cross promote other programs like membership.

Young Professionals Groups

Many NPOs have a Young Professionals Group that meets for networking and happy hour events. These young professionals may not be ideologically motivated by your cause yet… they may just want to drink beer with their friends. That’s ok! Tap into those motivations and offer interesting experiences for them to keep them coming back, and continue to conversation to deepen their relationship to the cause.

6. Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing means using content marketing to bring traffic in to you through search engines and social media. Inbound Marketing is based on the idea that your audience (especially Generation Y) no longer gets information “pushed” to them through traditional advertising methods – they read the news and watch television online, and use Google to search for information they want. The challenge is to have your content appear when they are looking for it.

There are two parts to this: Content Marketing and Analytics Tracking. More resources on NPO Content Marketing Strategy.

7. Recognize Your Value and Charge for it

Recognize the value you provide and charge for it! Many of our clients are membership organizations who offer exclusive benefits like member only events and special member pricing in exchange for membership fees.

Even if you don’t have membership, your Events are a great place to charge for your value. Think about ways to provide value through events and don’t be afraid to charge for these events.

This image came up as a topic of conversation in a meeting we had this morning and I wanted to share it. It is a pretty accurate description of the open source rewrite of Tendenci from the ground up over the last four years. And I’m pretty excited about the software moving away from the squiggly part on the right in this image from Henry Bloget’s blog post.

What People Think Success Looks Like Vs. What It Really Looks Like

Oh don’t worry, we’ll attack new challenges and make new squiggles which will make people think we are off track, or losing it, or “freak them out” as we get to the end of a road and go “oooops, that didn’t work.” But now we know that didn’t work.

It also reminded me of some of Hugh’s quotes in his book Not Sucking that I have always liked. For example:

THERE IS NO SECRET SAUCE

WORK HARD. LIVE QUIETLY. BE FRUGAL. SIMPLIFY. NEVER COMPLAIN. CONSTANTLY ELEVATE YOUR CRAFT.

Sure, a bit of talent and good for­tune comes in handy. It’s nice that you could draw bet­ter than any other kid in your small town, or that your parents had the money to afford ten­nis les­sons after class.

But that just gets you to the star­ting line. The actual race is what hap­pens after that, day in, day out, for many years to come.

And the ones who win, the ones who really ele­vate their craft, are gene­rally the ones who work the har­dest. Life is unfair.

People underestimate the power of hard work. I like that he simplifies it all into Creativity, Mastery and Meaning. He doesn’t lie to you about a four hour work week, or tell you you have to wear Gucci to be happy, he doesn’t even list being happy as a goal. Meaning, Mastery and Creativity are how you don’t suck. Being happy is what happens when you don’t suck. But not always, because it’s hard work.

The best way to not suck is to MASTER something use­ful. Obvious, yes?

The thing is, I know TONS of super suc­cess­ful peo­ple, but none of them fit this extreme, celeb-lottery-winner-Reality-TV model. Some of them are actually pretty boring, to be honest. But they lead happy, friendly lives and do VERY well career-wise.

THAT is what most suc­cess looks like, if you think about it. The stuff on TV or in the movies just isn’t REAL enough for us to learn that much use­ful stuff.

So I was thin­king about this again, recently, HARD.

What model would work for folk like you and me? A model that didn’t mean you had to sell your soul to Wall Street, Holly­wood, Washing­ton or the tabloids? A suc­cess model that doesn’t rely solely on the unli­ke­lihood of outra­geously good for­tune or acts of evil?

Then quite by chance, I saw a great docu­men­tary recently: “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”, a film about the world’s grea­test sushi mas­ter, and a light ­bulb EXPLODED in my head.

Our man, 85-year-old Jiro Ono is the world’s grea­test sushi chef– the only sushi mas­ter to ever have been awar­ded three Miche­lin stars. He’s also the oldest per­son to have ever been a reci­pient of that award.

The thing is, he doesn’t have a lot of money or own a fleet of trendy res­tau­rants in all the world’s capi­tals, a-la Wolf­gang Puck. No syn­di­ca­ted TV shows, celebrity-chef book deals or TV talk-show cir­cuits, either.

He just has just a small, plain, dull, ordi­nary-looking, low-key sushi bar with ten seats in the base­ment of a Tokyo office buil­ding, near the sub­way, the kind of non­desc­ript place you’d pro­bably just walk by without stop­ping, if you saw it. Ten seats! Yet he REALLY IS the best in the world at what he does.

Jiro works seven days a week, over 350 days a year (he hates taking vaca­tion), ser­ves sushi and sashimi to peo­ple in very small num­bers, and THAT’S IT. Just sushi. No salad, no appe­ti­zers, no deserts.

Like I said, JUST SUSHI. And by stic­king to this mini­ma­list, bare-bones for­mula, he’s become the best in the world.

A tiny little sushi bar in some ran­dom sub­way sta­tion. Yet peo­ple wait in line, peo­ple book a stool at his sushi bar as much as a year in advance, at pri­ces star­ting around $600 a head. Peo­ple have been known to fly all the way from Ame­rica or Europe, just to expe­rience a 30-minute meal. In an office basement!

I read that and felt humbled. And befuddled. And yes perhaps a bit justified.

I’m also really happy to know others are like me. I don’t particularly consider myself successful but I expect it will all work out. I have many blessings and I work with great people. I have a wonderful family. I’ve also had my share of loss and plenty of criticism, which I have learned comes with the role of CEO even for a small company (note: there are no books on how to be a CEO. You just do your damndest to learn fast!)

Back to Jiro. I get him. For me, I have been obsessing about one single software product called Tendenci built specifically for associations and non-profits for 13 years now. I’ve had a lot of help. I’ve never wavered nor lost the passion to keep improving it. I’m truly obsessed with making software in a way that makes our CLIENTS successful.

I started it in 2001, (the tech bubble had burst) on the premise, after reading hundreds of marketing books that clients who made money off of your software wouldn’t leave you. That they might forgive a missed deadline, but they would not forgive a security breach. That they wanted the freedom to leave at any time. So all of our clients were sold month to month, export your data and leave whenever you want. (this was before open source was an option and before PHP was around.)

What started on the Microsoft platform is now rewritten by a a great team of programmers who work here, and outsourcers, and hopefully more and more by people in the community. It is now Django/Python/Postgres and Ubuntu. We are working hard, and I am obsessing on adding donor management that integrates with Salesforce Foundation’s free licenses for non-profits. I’m completely obsessed with giving NPOs an alternative – that they can succeed on both bottom lines, financial and causes, and put more of their money and time towards the cause instead of spending 10k/user for Raiser’s Edge.

Can a 13 year old product built on Django give NPOs a real alternative to Raiser’s Edge and Blackbaud? And can it be an OPEN SOURCE product that you can integrate, extend, and experience with no vendor lock in at all? The odds are against me. And there are only 10 stools. And my obsession with achieving this success grows stronger every day, and it is not because I know anyone at Blackbaud.

I’m obsessed with collaboratively building Tendenci not because of what the software itself can do. I’m obsessed and seeking mastery because of what global-non-profits can do with the first open source Python software built specifically for them. That is my passion.

This year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) was one for the record books. CiviCRM was a buzz, making open-source software the hero for a multitude of constituent management woes. Speaking of CRMs, have you ever heard of a SocialCRM, yep…it’s coming people! And of course there was Google, never one to show up empty handed, launching “Google for Nonprofits” with the most adorable chocolate bars in tow. There were so many new, and often misspelled, online fund-raising technologies being discussed that many might have walked away a tad overwhelmed.

So what’s an organization to do? What is the best way to raise money online?

One word – VIDEO. And let me tell you why…

While meandering around NTC, a session caught my eye called, “Videos that Raise Money” (See3 Communications). I like videos, and I like helping our nonprofit clients raise money so I figured this would be a win/win situation. Then BAM…statistics were thrown right in my face:

“In December 2010 ComScore reported that 85% of US internet users watched online video, 88.6 million people watched online video on an average single day and the average American spent more than 14 hours watching online video (ComScore, February 2011)”

Geez, whatever happened to playing outside, but I digress…

This data cannot be ignored, and with all of the inexpensive ways to produce videos, nonprofits need to utilize this growing audience to increase awareness and of course, increase online donations.

Ok, so where should an organization begin? According to the guys over at See3, fund-raising has a life cycle and video becomes increasingly relevant during each stage.

Video Fund-raising Life Cycle

Awareness & Identification

Get people to think about the problem and how your organization is dealing with it; and remember, simplicity can force someone to listen.